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About This Game

REALLY BIG SKY! A super fast, twin analogue shooter for the modern age!
Way over in the big void of space live some aliens. They coveted [your planet] and would do anything to live there. So what's [your planet] to do? Yeah, blast through them all! Face off against waves of enemies, bosses, giant laser planets, blackholes, wormholes, massive lasers, planets and asteroids across 12 game modes!
Everything is procedurally generated from the way YOU play the game! From attack patterns, strength of bosses and enemies, pacing between waves and generosity of bonuses!
Features a comprehensive statistics system to let you hone your mad laser skills.

Control: This game makes best use with a dual analog controller, and I found that aiming with a mouse can get a little congested due to the limited range of resolutions and windowed mode by default.

This game plays very smoothly and shooting in a full 360° while trying to focus on enemy, bullet, and self placement starts becoming second nature after only a couple plays.

Transitioning into drill-mode to go through indestructible obstacles is very smooth, and moving while drilling is very precise even though objects will produce a horizontal movement slow.

Firing: Your default is a powerful and large laser block that then becomes a rapid-fire volley of smaller lasers. You recharge the more powerful shot just by not shooting for a while, and from what I could tell; the limit of large lasers stored is infinite. You can unlock additional lasers that fire around your ship, as well as a bomb that occasionally fires out that is affected by your velocity as well.

You also can charge your drill and go into a very powerful (and limited use) spin that makes being still impossible due to always sliding, but you can spin forever if desired.

Upgrades: There are only a couple ways to upgrade, which involve either:

Boring through planets that randomly take up the entire screen and fly through upgrade pads for boosts.

Killing enemies, collecting their drops, then using them to upgrade your ship permanently after you die.

There only appears to be two temporary ammo upgrades, one is just a super powered version of your charged laser, and the other is announced with a quip from the narrator and results in an auto-firing beam that penetrates everything.

Permanent upgrades are very potent and are why you can keep going higher with your score after each death. A few upgrades include: stronger lasers, a shield to absorb bullets, and a slow orbiting ball that destroys enemy fire on contact.

Enemies:Really Big Sky excels with enemy patterns and design, never really seeming "unfair" due to excellent design. The only time the game will steal a cheap death from you is because of a special effect and random enemy placement.

Artstyle

This game is gorgeous to look at with its very vibrant colors and randomized galaxies. If you are simply just a fan of recolored deep-space phenomenon, you will be hooked easily.

Whenever you find yourself inside a worm-hole, the game shifts into a 3D plane, letting you travel down the space-pipe of many deep colors. However, I do find that sometimes it gets difficult focusing on staying centered due to how dark it can get.

There are also many moments where the colors shift and go negative or very dark, leading to their own obstacles. Due to their frequency after a while, I never really felt obstructed by them except for when the screen is very dark and I can't see an enemy that absorbs shots (however, bullets and asteroids are contrasted so avoiding them is fine).There is even a semi-rare event where floating dinosaur fossil heads breath bullets and fire at you while the background goes black and the screen goes blurrier while everything slows down and an air siren plays.

Enemy design is top-notch, even referencing classic arcade games and styles. This is very hard to explain in text, but just looking at screenshots should clarify.Bosses all feel adequately boss-like (even impressively so in one regard), although it may feel a bit stupid fighting a giant orb with a shield around it if it never gets to the point it can drop suns on the screen.

The worst part of the visual design is just the shape of your ship, even tho it's perfectly acceptable as is. It just gets overshadowed by how intense the rest of the game is.

Sound:

Techno, a relaxed (and younger) British narrator, and modern mixed with retro beeps and boops come together for a very calming yet engaging experience. There is an option to disable the narrator, and playing the game without audio doesn't take anything from the game; which I say is a good thing due to not everyone being fond of techno and narrators. However, I am, so the sound gets a pass.

Also when you kill the enemy based off of Vector graphics, it dies in a satisfying old-school 'boop'.

Options:

MASSIVE failure. The highest accepted resolution is 1920x1080. The next highest is immediately 1280x720. For someone with a 1600 range resolution, this is disappointing because 1600x900 is still a 16:9 aspect ratio. Also don't expect playing the game windowed if you don't have the exact resolution the game wants; it'll either get compressed or it will just default to windowed.

Also, there are only three graphic options (even tho with a game like this; it's understandable).

The game while windowed is "Always on top" by default and no way to change it.

At least you can: adjust sound via percentage, disable the aiming line, adjust narrator frequency, and also listen to songs you discovered in game.

Replay:

This game was built around dying and restarting with no end besides high scores. Due to unlocking multiple game modes that change how the game is played drastically, as well as just the upgrade system, you can find yourself replaying this game a lot while having fun.

There really isn't much to say because the game was built for this, and it works.

Value:

This game is 5USD on steam right now, and it is the kind of game you can just come back to at any time as well as leave at any time. It's entertaining and definitely worth the money. If this game goes on sale; it'll be double its worth.

That is, if you like SHMUP/Bullet-hell games. If you hate them with a passion; why even bother with reading this?

Really cool twin-stick shooter here. What really caught my attention is the adaptive gameplay that changes the difficulty based on your play style (more enemies on screen, harder bosses, etc.), the many different game modes and the killer soundtrack. My only gripe is that I wish there were other screen resolutions (the highest resolution isn't supported on my monitor, so I'm relegated to playing the game windowed) and that as the gameplay intensifies it can be hard to discern where YOU are, let alone the enemies and their bullets. That said, I humbly recommend this for people who like twin-stick shooters, challenging gameplay and/or awesome music.